


nobody left to believe in

by Emamel



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drinking, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 06:12:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19101325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel
Summary: Crowley had always trusted in the universe to look out for him, one way or another. And he’d never quite realised that, in all of his optimism, he’d somehow included Aziraphale in that assumption. That if there was something out there in the universe watching his back – be it God, Satan, someone else, or just the natural forces of cosmic entropy – then it only made sense that it would be watching out for the angel as well.Crowley had been wrong about a lot of things – one of the perils of having been around since the Beginning.He didn’t think he’d ever been as wrong about anything as he was about this.AKA - Aziraphale didn't manage to find a body in time for Armageddon, leading Crowley to the conclusion that, rather than discorporated, he must have been smote.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I do have a happy epilogue for this, I promise!
> 
> Follows book continuity rather than the show, by which I mean Crowley still turns up to Lower Tadfield even though he wasnt visited by the angel of Christmas present.
> 
> But please feel free to keep David Tennant screaming for his best friend and then strutting out to 'somebody to love' in mind. I did :)

Aziraphale had been discorporated before, of course. One didn’t have a physical form for six thousand years without accumulating a little wear-and-tear1, or scratches in the paint, so to speak. It had, however, been a remarkably long time since his last jaunt through the metaphysical. Only ninety short years2 after he had turned his back on the Garden of Eden for the last time, Aziraphale had rather unfortunately found himself on the wrong end of an extremely unpleasant man with an extremely sharp dagger. Not yet knowing what would happen to him, he hadn’t thought to counter the attack, or even so much as move out of the way; after all, this was no weapon of divine or infernal design.

So he had been in for a rather nasty shock when he found himself face-to-face with Heaven’s quartermaster, and the prospect of filling out innumerable forms3 and joining a thankfully short waiting list before he could be assigned a new body.

It had been enough to put him off the whole experience, and as such, he had endeavoured to avoid it at all costs in subsequent years.

He had done a commendable job of it, all told. There had been a couple of instances that had required a little last-minute intervention of demonic origin, but he tried not to dwell on those too much. Not, to be clear, because he felt it was a sign of personal failure, but rather because the memory tended to give him the ethereal equivalent of heart palpitations.

This instance had been somewhat different – for a start, the only violence had been in the form of a remarkably irate witchfinder bellowing nonsense and waving his finger around. For another, though Aziraphale had found himself unexpectedly flung from his physical form, there had been no real harm done to it4 which made for a nice change. That had been several hours and four continents ago. Now, Aziraphale was starting to feel really quite exhausted.

It ought not to have been possible, he thought glumly to himself. After all, exhaustion was, by definition, something that happened on the material plane. Cells didn’t have enough energy or something – he’d never bothered himself with the particulars, as he’d never considered any scenario that it might apply to him. Really it should have been impossible for angels to get tired. They were fonts of divine energy, beings that existed on an utterly separate level from the concept of exhaustion.

And yet, here he was, wherever that may be now. Exhausted. Incorporeal. No idea how much time had passed since he’d stepped into the circle, and therefore no idea just how long the world had left before it all went a bit explodey.

As a matter of fact, though he didn’t know it at that precise moment, the world had been due some explosions approximately twelve minutes earlier, right around the time he had decided to do the metaphysical equivalent of tucking up his feet on the sofa and dozing in front of Springwatch with a cup of tea tilting precariously in his hand. He had hoped that this would go some way to restoring him to the point that he could continue looking for a suitable body to inhabit that was both receptive and at least in the same country as the antichrist.

So far it didn’t appear to be making much of a difference, but Aziraphale was persevering nonetheless.

He was persevering so hard, in fact, that it took him what may have been a small eternity – but was probably closer to a few seconds – to notice that he was no longer alone in the space between dimensions.

Being that the other entity also lacked a body, and didn’t appear to be an angel, demon, or Crowley, Aziraphale was rather thrown by this.

“Um. Hello,” he said5 finally. He didn’t really know what else to do.

“Hullo,” said the being, in what might have been a curious voice if he had a voice, and Aziraphale had ears capable of discerning a curious tone. “What are you doing stuck all the way out here then?”

“ _Ah_ ,” said Aziraphale, in a pale imitation of his usual bluster. He found himself wishing rather desperately that he had hands with which to fuss shirt cuffs, and a throat to clear. “Well you see, that’s a rather long story, and I’m afraid we may be on something of a tight schedule – at least, I think we are, it’s rather hard to tell, but I would hope that even like this I might have noticed if things had, er, got under way.”

“No, it’s okay, we’ve got time,” said the being. “But I think I probably know most of it already, and it’s just boring if you hafta hear the same story twice so close together. Are you Aziraphale then? ‘Cause if you’re not then I really think you should just tell me now. I’ve already got a lotta work to do, and I really do need to find this Aziraphale person. Angel. Angel-person – sorry, that’s not rude, is it?”

“I – well, no, I don’t believe so,” Aziraphale said. He contemplated lying to the being for just a moment, but some deeply-held instinct told him just what a bad idea that would be. “And yes, I am Aziraphale.”

“Oh, good,” this time, Aziraphale was swamped with an impression of relief. “It really would’a been a pain if I’d ‘ad to go ‘round looking for you everywhere and when.”

“Um,” Aziraphale said blankly. He tried to take a moment to rally himself, and failed miserably. “To, to whom am I speaking?”

“’m Adam Young,” said the voice, apparently oblivious to the tailspin this sent Aziraphale’s poor, racing mind into. “And I think you’re last on my list of things to get sorted out. First I thought I could just put you back the way you was and that’d be jus’ fine, but then I reckon’d I should probably come get you sorted m’self. ‘s tricky trying to get someone back in a body that dun’t exist when they’re not even in the right place for bodies to be.”

“I see,” Aziraphale said faintly; he was suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that he was speaking currently to the antichrist, a being that could theoretically wipe him from this and every other plane of existence6.

“An’  _then_  I thought it’d be rude if I just went and stuck you back in the same body as you had, an’ din’t even ask if that body was okay for you,” Adam continued, and he somehow managed to give the sense of a wide-eyed, if not entirely earnest, stare. This was impressive given that he had no body, no eyes to widen, and no actual voice to give any sort of inflection. Aziraphale would no doubt spend a great deal of time later being appropriately impressed, when he was no longer trying to metaphysically hyperventilate.

“Yes, yes I was rather fond of it,” Aziraphale managed. In that precise moment, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you if that was the truth or not7. He only knew that he really didn’t want to be putting in any special requests for a new body to the antichrist, who had, as far as he was able to tell, not made the world go all explodey.

“Oh,” said Adam in something like relief. “Tha’s good. Easy, I mean. I’ll hafta drop you off where you were, though. Jus’ gimme a sec, I’ll get you all fixed up proper.”

And it was so.

Aziraphale opened his eyes and took a deep, unnecessary breath. He patted his hands over his coat, and tried to twist himself around to see that everything was present and correct. He thought that perhaps his coat was a little longer, his sweater a little more fitted, but it was really quite hard to tell in a body that was still relearning what synapses were.

He turned slowly, but there was no sign of Adam – not even a lingering hint of ozone to suggest he had ever been there. He then continued turning, struck by the sudden realisation that he had no idea where on God’s green Earth he was.

“Oh,” he said, followed swiftly by a word that may have been inappropriate in polite company – but, if there is no polite company to hear an inappropriate word fall in a forest, who’s to say if it made a sound?8

* * *

 

1 – In that particular instance, it had been rather more tear than wear

2 – Give or take. Functioning calendars had only existed for sixty of those years

3 – Literally – humans hadn’t invented numbers that could count that high yet

4 – Aside from the unfortunate dissembling down to the molecular level

5 – He did not speak as you or I might speak, as he lacked the mouth necessary to do so. He did not even speak as you or I might imagine a formless denizen of Heaven would speak. To properly explain how he spoke would require a number of PhDs that don’t exist on Earth and an in-depth understanding of the wavelengths that angels generally occupy outside the range of human perception, of which this author has neither

6 – He was also rapidly coming to terms with the fact that he had listed ‘child murder’ as one of the possible solutions to the problems the day had presented. Very low down the list, mind you, but still certainly present

7 – It was

8 – It did

* * *

 

The world had been restored for thirteen hours, and a lone demon had been drinking solidly for twelve of them. The first hour had been dedicated to transporting himself back to London, or it would have been a solid thirteen.

Crowley couldn’t remember the last time he had been this drunk. It might have been in what would later become Croatia, in 1132 BC. It may have been just after the Library of Alexandria – ahem – was destroyed. It might have been sometime in the First World War1.

Certainly, he thought, staring at the empty bottle in his hand with something a little like betrayal, he had never been this drunk on his own.

And really, that was the crux of the problem, wasn’t it?

He let his head fall back against the plush pile of the rug beneath him. It didn’t make quite the satisfying  _thunk_  he’d been hoping for – more of a dull  _whoomf_ , really – so he waved unsteady fingers through the air to miracle up the delayed sound himself. That, he thought, was much better suited to his current mood.

The bottle in his other hand had once contained a rather fine 1947 Cheval Blanc that he hadn’t tasted a single mouthful of, and now contained little more than dregs. He hadn’t bothered to get himself more bottles – only continued refilling this one every time it got too light. He’d just tried to do so again, and managed nothing more than a faint headache, so for the moment he’d abandoned the attempt.

Crowley blinked blearily up at the ceiling, and lamented his inability to fall into a drunken coma.

Oh, he could sleep well enough – Crowley was a  _champion_  sleeper. He was also quite proficient in naps, snoozes, dozes, and the sort of lazy Sunday afternoon in which you are sure that you  _were_ awake, yet somehow cannot produce a single piece of evidence to prove it. All of that was, unfortunately, very different from a drunken coma. They all involved being able to keep his blessed mind quiet for longer than two consecutive minutes.

Aziraphale had been keeping this bottle back – not for any sort of special occasion, but just because it hadn’t, he’d said, felt like the right time to drink it. Aziraphale was very big on listening to those odd little feelings of his. It had been exactly where it had been kept since Aziraphale first bought it in 1948, still perfectly preserved, and Crowley’s hand shook a little when he had picked it up.

There had been a part of him – small, but far too loud to completely ignore – that had hoped to hear the angel’s huff behind him. To have the bottle snatched away because it  _still isn’t time for this one, my dear, really_.

Of course, it had been only him, the bottle, and the books. He’d almost tried spilling a little wine over the first-edition Dante, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to, in the end. As satisfying as it might have been, it still seemed like a step too far. Besides, he thought to himself. Besides. It had been bad enough being allowed to drink the wine. He didn’t know what he’d do if there was no-one to stop him ruining the books2.

Crowley’s wandering mind found itself pondering if Adam had recreated the holy sigil that Aziraphale had hidden beneath this very rug. He could find out, he supposed, then groaned as even the thought of standing made his head swim. It was harmless to him inactive, but he still didn’t like the thought of sitting atop a direct line to the big guys Upstairs.

Even if he did have a few choice words for them.

But then again, there was always the chance it wasn’t Heaven at all. The Metatron  _had_  looked terribly confused3 when he’d cornered them about Aziraphale on the airfield. Maybe they really hadn’t had anything to do with it. Maybe they really didn’t know what had happened.

Which only left Downstairs, something that Crowley felt only marginally more equipped to deal with. Beyond that, there really wasn’t a terribly long list of suspects.

Only the divine or the infernal were capable of true smiting. And if Adam hadn’t brought Aziraphale back, then that meant there was nothing left of him  _to_  bring back. It was a fairly simple progression of logic that managed to completely stall Crowley about halfway through.  _Six thousand years_ he thought bitterly.  _Just enough time to get used to having someone around_.

He lifted to bottle to his lips again, grimacing as he remembered his last attempt to refill it. Well, there was no rush. He had time. It wasn’t the end of the world.

Pity, that.

Oh, no. That wasn’t fair. After all, this world had always been more or less decent to them –  _him_. And he  _had_  just spent the last eleven years trying to make sure it could continue being decent. It would have been a terrible shame if, after all that effort, it had just gone and ended anyway.

It was just that. That. That Crowley had always trusted in the universe to look out for him, one way or another. And he’d never quite realised that, in all of his optimism, he’d somehow included Aziraphale in that assumption. That if there was something out there in the universe watching his back – be it God, Satan, someone else, or just the natural forces of cosmic entropy – then it only made sense that it would be watching out for the angel as well.

Crowley had been wrong about a lot of things – one of the perils of having been around since the Beginning.

He didn’t think he’d ever been as wrong about anything as he was about this.

“Bugger thissss,” he said, trying to sit himself back up for just a moment, before abandoning the attempt when all it did was offer him a better view of the empty room, a mug of congealed cocoa still sat on the desk, and the tartan throw on the back of the sofa that Crowley had foolishly miracled up as a joke and Aziraphale had loved without the slightest hint of shame or irony.

“Sssshould jusssst burn the placccce back down! ‘d sssserve you right, Zira! Leaving me to deal with the apocap – apolac – Armageddon all by mysssself! Going and getting yoursssself all, all  _ssssmoted_!”

Crowley waved his hand towards the general vicinity of the rest of the shop in a gesture that he thought was appropriately menacing.

“I will! I’ll sssset fire to every one of your biblessss! You’ll, you’ll have to  _thwart_  me!”

And nothing happened. The books didn’t catch fire. Crowley did not feel thwarted, so it was probably just that he was in no fit state to be setting fire to anything. He was too busy, he realised in a distant sort of way, making an awful keening wail as he scrunched his eyes shut as tight as he could.

It was probably a good thing he’d been in some sort of shock on the drive back. If he’d felt anything like this, he likely would have hit multiple other road users, and then Aziraphale, from wherever he was or wasn’t, would have been exceptionally disappointed. Well, there was every chance Aziraphale was exceptionally disappointed with Crowley right now, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. If the angel wanted to judge him, he could come right on back to life and do it to Crowley’s face.

“Why?” He moaned, from somewhere low in his throat. “What did he ever do? He wasn’t the one who, who invented original sin. He wasn’t the one who mucked up the Plan. What did he do to desssserve  _thissss_?”

Unless – unless that was the point. Punishment wasn’t really punishment is you didn’t exist to suffer through it. Maybe it wasn’t about Aziraphale.

After all, Crowley was the only one suffering now.

Both Heaven and Hell, while unimaginative, were both  _very_  keen on the ironic sorts of punishments. And while Crowley would have liked to think that a benevolent God wouldn’t approve of this sort of thing, he knew enough about the Creator – and all the things that had been going on since free will really took off – to know that God wouldn’t really care. At least, not enough to interfere.

 _Ineffable_ , as the bloody angel would have said. Except he wasn’t here to say it now, and Crowley certainly wasn’t going to stoop so low.

Begging on the other hand, was a low he had stooped to before, and would no doubt stoop to again.

“Jusssst,” he started, and tried to get the hissing under control. It probably wasn’t a very polite way to address the Almighty, especially not for one of the fallen. “Jussst, please, ssend him back. He should get to ssee that hiss books are all okay, and that the world isss ssstill sssspinning. He’ssss done enough good for that. Thwarted enough wilessss. And all the onessss he didn’t were my fault, really. Ssssso bring him – jussst bring him  _back_. I know we haven’t spoke in a really long time, and I know we aren’t on good termsss, but pleassse. For, for  _Zira’s_ ssssake, pleassse, he’sss all I’ve got left, he’sss the only good thing I still have from Heaven, pleassse-”

His voice cracked and gave up, but Crowley didn’t notice. He kept up his pleas silently, mouth working awkwardly around a tongue just a little too long and forked to pass for human. His ears were ringing unpleasantly – either a product of the wine, or the fact that praying was always more than a little bit painful for demons.

But the ringing in his ears just grew louder for a brief, horrible instant, before cutting out entirely.

Had Crowley been even slightly less of a drunken, mumbling mess, he may well have realised that the ringing was actually the doorbell of the shop. He may have heard the click as the door was unlocked, or the shuffling of fine leather shoes over the mat. He may not have, of course, but we will never know for certain. The reality was, he  _was_  that drunk, and he  _didn’t_  hear any of those things. The very next thing he heard, in fact, was an aggrieved sigh, and a rather put upon  _tsk_. Crowley didn’t have the willpower at that precise moment to lift an eyelid; but then, he didn’t have to. He was very well acquainted with that put upon  _tsk_. His mouth stretched into something that may have resembled a smile if it hadn’t wobbled quite so much.

“Ssssstill wassssn’t time for it then? Angel?” He asked, waving the bottle haphazardly around. A couple of drops splashed on his face, and more than a couple onto his shirt. He gestured to miracle them away, but didn’t bother to look and see if it had worked.

“My dear, I’ve never seen you in such a state,” said a familiar voice to his left. Crowley’s grasp on the bottle slackened, and he felt it fall from between his fingers. It must have landed on the thick, soft rug somewhere beside him, because he didn’t hear it hit the floor.

Crowley loved that rug. He could write sonnets devoted to that rug. That rug and him had been through something real over the last twelve hours.

“I’ll take this, Crowley,” said the voice that Crowley knew better than any sound in the world, a little nonsensically.

It wasn’t Aziraphale. Crowley knew that – had several very good arguments for it, in fact4.

He didn’t open his eyes to check.

There was a sensation like fingers – soft, warm, and a little bit heavenly – running over his hair. Crowley tilted his face up towards it. He may not look so much like a serpent these days, but he’d never quite managed to shake the habit of seeking out warmth. If Crowley really concentrated, he could almost muster up the familiar scent of bergamot and dust that always seemed to cling to Aziraphale’s overcoat.

“Oh, my dear boy, what happened?” Asked Hallucination Aziraphale. “I was only gone a day.”

“ _Yesssss_!” Crowley hissed despite himself. “A whole – a whole blesssssed day! The firsssst day of, of, of the resssst of my life!”

He hiccupped.

It wasn’t a sob. Crowley didn’t sob.

He did, however, drunkenly hiccup several times in a row, hard enough to make his chest ache and his eyes water. He swiped furiously at his face and tried to curl himself into as small a ball as possible – had he been sober enough, he might have even shrunk himself down into a little snake to curl up even smaller and tighter. Snakes didn’t have treacherous tear ducts. Snakes didn’t drunkenly imagine their dead partner gently lifting their head into a soft lap. Clearly, snakes were the superior beings, and it had only taken him six thousand years, one heartbreak, and one stage of grief to notice.

“Well now,” the voice was somehow both kind and exasperated, a combination that Aziraphale had mastered several millennia ago, and that Crowley had clearly thought worth committing to memory. “Whatever is the matter? The world is safe, my books are all here, and don’t think I didn’t see your car outside. Anything else can be dealt with, hm?”

Crowley shook his head wordlessly, but didn’t trust himself to open his mouth. He’d only end up hiccupping again.

“Crowley? Can you sober up, dear?” Crowley shook his head again, but this time managed a sullen little,

“Don’t want to be sssssober.”

“Dare I ask why not?” Crowley had long known he was the only demon with something even approaching an imagination, but even he hadn’t realised just how good it was. He was quite certain he’d managed to get Aziraphale’s stuffy, frustrated eye-rolling spot on.

It seemed perfectly obvious to Crowley why he should never like to be sober again, and as a hallucination of his, it should be perfectly clear to Aziraphale too. He opened one suspicious eye just a crack; just enough to see a vague outline that may have been angel-shaped with none of the defining characteristics.

“You’ll go away if I’m ssssober,” he said wretchedly. The lap under his head jolted slightly, which was really rather rude for a hallucinatory pillow, in Crowley’s opinion.

“I most certainly will not!” Ah, yes, the bluster. Crowley always did like tempting that out. “For a start, we’re in  _my_  shop! And if you will insist on staying drunk, I should at least like to know why on  _Earth_  you thought it was a good idea to pass out on my nice rug!”

“Din’t pass out,” Crowley muttered sullenly, and didn’t point out that it wasn’t for a lack of trying. His brain and any products thereof would already know that, so it would be rather pointless.

“ _Crowley_ ,” said the angel warningly.

Crowley found himself overtaken by another sudden bought of hiccups.

“They killed my best friend,” he said, and didn’t hiss at all. The hand that had been moving gently through his hair all this time, almost unnoticed, stopped for a second and shook, before starting again.

“Oh. I – well. I’m terribly sorry to hear that, dearest,” Aziraphale said, and there was no hint of temper in his voice. Just something a little shaky that Crowley couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Have you,” there was hesitance now, where there hadn’t been before. Crowley tried to reach up, in the vague direction he thought the angel’s face might be, to pat at it reassuringly. Aziraphale was de – gone. He had nothing to be hesitant about, and Crowley tried to tell him that with a few clumsy swipes of his hand against what may have been a cheek. It felt like Aziraphale was smiling, but his voice was still sad when he spoke. “Have you tried asking Adam about it? He’s really a terribly nice boy, under all of the Hellish powers.”

Crowley managed a despondent shake of his head.

“Silly angel,” he said, and it was fond now. He had decided, rather abruptly, that he could be as fond as he wanted. As fond as he had been for six thousand years, under it all. “Can’t bring back something that dun’t even exisssst anymore. He already fixed everythin’ elsssse.” He leaned up a little, and whispered, like it was some great secret,

“I even assssked  _Death_.” He spoke over Aziraphale’s squawk of  _you what?_  “And y’know what he ssssaid? That it wassssn’t hissss jurissssdiction anymore!”

It had seemed something of a win-win at the time. Either Death could do something about it, or he would be annoyed enough by Crowley’s asking to do something else – at that point, Crowley hadn’t been too picky. But it seemed his luck had run out – his optimistic streak had carried him as far as it was able, and not an inch further.

“Would you tell me about them?” Aziraphale asked after a long moment of silence. His voice was small, and tight, and something about it struck Crowley as wrong, but his brain was far too slippery to grasp what it was. “They must have been something truly special, to go to all that trouble. It might – help. Help you, I mean.” Crowley thought this through hazily, before nodding. He wasn’t sure if it really made sense or not, but he was willing to trust that Aziraphale would know more about this sort of thing than him.

“Known ‘m since – sssince – forever. Before time was a thing,” Crowley said. “Could alwaysss count on him. And we din’t have a lot in common, but we had all the important bitsss! And bessssides, you get used to people being around that long.”

Aziraphale laughed, a little uncomfortably.

“Well now, you don’t need to tell  _me_  that, my dear,” he said.

“But I do!” This, suddenly, seemed extremely important. Crowley pushed himself into a position that could be described as upright, if one were feeling particularly generous5, and peered unsteadily into the hallucination’s eyes for the first time. They looked exactly like Aziraphale’s, complete with the little golden flecks that always caught the light no matter which way he turned.  _Bless it_  but Crowley was good.

“I never told you when you were alive, and now you’ve gone and got yourself smited, so I’ll never get to tell you again!”

He had the singular pleasure of watching Aziraphale’s eyes widen, and a flood of colour rush up his cheeks, but didn’t pause to appreciate the sight, steamrolling over any of Aziraphale’s attempts to talk.

“You were -! You were -! Huffy, and you had terrible taste in clothes, and I don’t underssssstand what’ssss so great about Classic FM that you thought it had to be the only blessed channel you can get all over the country no matter how bad the ssssignal is, and sssometimes I hiss my words just because I know it makessss you smile, and I’ve never unkilled a duck for anyone else, and none of it  _mattersss_  because Heaven or Hell or ssssomeone decided to off you, and now I’m sssstuck here on my own waiting for the next go-around!”

It was quiet for a long time. Long enough for Crowley to slump back into the hallucination’s lap and close his eyes again. They really were so heavy, and sore after the hiccups made them water so much.

“I really do think,” Aziraphale said finally, “that you ought to sober up.”

Crowley didn’t dignify that with a response beyond tightening his grip on the angel’s calf.

“It would be in both our best interests?”

Still not worth a reply.

“For me?”

That made him pause a little, before shaking his head definitively no.

“Oh, for the love of –  _someone_.” The next thing Crowley knew, he was up on his feet, through no effort or will of his own. There were a pair of arms wrapped rather solidly around his shoulders, and his feet didn’t want to move separately, apparently rather stuck on the idea that they used to be a tail. His face was pressed heavily against a soft shoulder though, so Crowley didn’t complain, even when the wool tickled at his nose. He had the vague feeling that he was being led somewhere, but he’d be redeemed if he could figure out where.

“Here we are,” Aziraphale muttered, right before he dropped Crowley onto what felt like a bed – just the right side of springy, with a thread count that was honestly sinful. Crowley appreciated it for an all-too-brief second before he found himself gripped by panic.

He surged up, and halfway off the bed before Aziraphale caught him again.

“Nuh – no!” If Crowley lay down in a bed, then he would go to sleep. If Crowley went to sleep, then he would wake up sober. If he woke up sober, then Aziraphale would be gone. “Nonono.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Aziraphale’s voice was firm, though his hands were soft as anything where they were untangling Crowley’s from his lapels. “You need a good night’s sleep my dear, and to face the morning with a clear head. I promise you it’ll all seem much brighter.”

Crowley shook his head where it was mashed against the side of Aziraphale’s neck. The neck in question moved a little as Aziraphale sighed.

“Would it help if I stayed with you?” He asked.

That… gave Crowley pause. He hadn’t thought of that. If the hallucination stayed with him while he slept, and Crowley held on tightly enough – well, he was pretty solid now. As long as Crowley didn’t move a single muscle as he slept6 then it should be fine.

There was something amiss with that logic, but exhaustion had crept up on him like a snake in the grass, and Crowley found himself being lowered back to the bed once more, this time unresistingly.

“There you are,” was the last thing Crowley heard as he slipped off to sleep. He had just enough time to congratulate himself on miracling up such a comfortable bed – he’d even managed to permeate the pillows with Aziraphale’s scent, which he desperately pressed his nose into now – before he was swept away7.

* * *

 

1 – In fact it was none of these, for the simple reason that Crowley had never been this drunk before in his very long existence

2 – Well, no, that’s not entirely accurate. He did know what he would do. He was just trying very hard not to think on it too long, when he knew that Aziraphale would disapprove most vehemently

3 – Insofar as a being with no face made of holy fire can look confused

4 – The arguments went as follows:

·        Aziraphale had been smited. Smote? Smiten?

·        Aziraphale would never approve of Crowley’s deep love for this rug

·        Aziraphale had never, in six thousand years, sounded quite so fondly exasperated, and he wouldn’t have started now

·        Aziraphale was dead

·        Aziraphale hadn’t started nagging him about the wine

·        Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned the new books that Crowley had noticed Adam stocked

·        Aziraphale wasn’t coming back

5 – As well as a little hazy on the meaning of the word ‘upright’

6 – Which was, fortunately, how he naturally slept anyway

7 – Had he stayed awake any longer, he would have realised that not even he would have miracled up such a hideous quilt cover. He also would have felt the careful, cleansing touch of a kiss against his forehead to keep away bad dreams – though demons have no other kind. But he did not stay awake, and so he noticed nothing


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I learnt writing this chapter - Mayfair, Soho, and St James Park are really close together, wow; I am incapable of writing a tiny little epilogue; every character I ever write ever becomes ace. Oops?
> 
> I'm not as fond of this chapter, and I should probably give it a thorough editing before posting it, but when have I ever done that?. This chapter is a lot more dialogue heavy, and contains mentions of suicide ideation (though it is never explicit) by an immortal being. Please take care of yourselves!
> 
> Please feel free to come and talk to me on tumblr, where I'm TheAceAce. I'm mostly podcasts these days, but I've rediscovered my love for Good Omens, and I'm always happy to chat

As a demon, it was expected that Crowley have at least a passing familiarity with all seven of the deadly sins – and by expected, he meant compulsory.

He’d given them all a pretty good go over the years, and had really found his stride with most. Sloth was simple enough – despite being such busy little creatures, humans had a healthy (in his opinion) appreciation for sitting in the sun and doing absolutely nothing for hours on end. Gluttony and greed, too – Crowley had a deep love and respect for the finer things in life, and no qualms about inspiring the same in others. Pride – well, he certainly knew the value of a bad job well done1. Wrath wasn’t something that Crowley himself was overtly fond of, but it was so terribly easy to push humans right up to (and then well past) that breaking point. Similarly, he didn’t personally have a great deal of experience with envy – when you can miracle up anything in the world you really want, there’s not much point fussing over what other people have – but there were plenty of people over the years that had stared at him with envious eyes.

Lust was a little trickier.

Crowley liked to think he’d given it a fair shot, and overall, had found it enjoyable enough. The problem, he thought, was that it wasn’t really enjoyable enough to be worth the effort he had to put in to making sure he had all the necessary parts present and in working order.

Besides, lust was the sort of thing humans could really teach Hell a thing or two about. They’d whittled it down to something of an art form over the years without any sort of demonic help – the invention of pornography was a perfect example. Mostly, Crowley sat back, watched them go about their business with mild bemusement, and wrote up the occasional exaggerated report to send back Down.

All of this was a rather long-winded way of saying that when Crowley described something as being ‘better than sex’, he was mostly doing it because he’d really got into the swing of human turns-of-phrase. Crowley thought there were plenty of things better than sex, including – but not limited to – vintage wine, lunches out, warm summer afternoons on a park bench, being comfortable enough to do away with his glasses, finding typos in old books2, and, of course, sleep.

Something which he was, unfortunately, no longer partaking in.

There was no way for Crowley to know if it was the pounding headache or the roiling stomach that woke him first, as they were both competing viciously for his attention.

“Gah,” said Crowley, and rolled over to press his face into the pillow, hard enough that a human would have suffocated. In fact, Crowley was hopeful that he might manage the same – as inconvenient as discorporation was, it was still preferable to whatever was going on with his organs – right up until memories from the day before started to filter in.

He hiccupped.

He did, however, also stop pressing his face into the pillow quite as hard.

Even without looking, without stretching out an arm, or a wing, or a tendril of demonic energies, he knew that the other side of the bed was empty and cold. He may still have been a little hazy on the exact sequence of events between his third top-up of the bottle and waking up, but he was reasonably certain he’d been stupid enough to go to sleep when there was a perfectly good figment of his imagination for him to pour his ill-concealed heart out to. He blessed softly under his breath.

It was, he felt, not the most auspicious start to the second day of the rest of his life. Aziraphale wouldn’t have stood for his moping around – would have muttered, glared, and generally made such a nuisance of himself that eventually Crowley’s patience would have worn thin enough for him to agree to get up.

Of course, if Aziraphale were here, there’d be no need for it. The world had always been best enjoyed together.

Crowley didn’t go so far as to miracle away his headache – as punishments went, it was relatively minor, but he’d make the most of it – but he did drag himself up until he was sat on the edge of the bed. His shirt was half-undone, his glasses had long-since disappeared, and though there was no mirror, he could _feel_ the utter devastation that was his hair. He dragged a hand through it, which only served to dredge up foggy memories of perfectly manicured and moisturised hands scratching delicately across his scalp.

He shut his eyes for a long, slow moment of despair. He decided he’d allow himself that much.

When he opened them again, there was a steaming mug on the bedside table.

Of course, it was entirely possible – even likely – that it had been there before he’d closed his eyes. In fact, Crowley told himself, it had probably been there last night as well, and he simply hadn’t been in any fit state to notice it until now. There was even a chance, his desperately racing mind tried to tell him, that he had miracled it there as he woke up, and had promptly forgotten.

Except he wouldn’t have kept it hot overnight.

Except – and he had to flick out his tongue to check – he never made cocoa with a generous glug of Baileys.

Except it was in the cracked [mug](https://www.google.com/search?q=oscar+wilde+temptation+mug&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=RQGlDI6H9ImbAM%253A%252CBIQUkcQgiXZcQM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kToDsaVDmt1r85AXD0fk-Ie0hTH2A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizvPqowN3iAhXYBWMBHcpECHcQ9QEwA3oECAQQCg#imgrc=RQGlDI6H9ImbAM:) that Crowley had bought for Aziraphale with real money3 almost twenty years ago, and that he knew Aziraphale only used when one of them was upset about something.

Crowley wouldn’t have dared miracle himself up something in that mug, no matter how many sheets to the wind he was.

He leapt up like he’d been scalded, and had to throw his arms wide for balance, even as he started to hurry for the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted the abhorrent pattern of the quilt he’d been soundly tucked under, and wobbled faster. There weren’t many beings in the universe willing to keep something like that around unless their intention was to burn it.

Like most shops in Soho, Aziraphale’s building was narrow, maze-like, and altogether not designed with a dreadfully hungover demon in mind. It took Crowley three attempts to get the door open, and he wasted a precious second orienting himself before hurtling down the stairs.

Two walls were unfortunately dented as he rebounded off them at speed, but he barely noticed. That, he reasoned, would be a problem for Later Crowley. Present Crowley had bigger concerns.

The stairs came out in the cramped back room of the shop, now completely clean and free of any sign that last night a demon had staggered drunkenly around pushing over stacks of notes like a cat with teacups. There was something that Crowley might have cautiously labelled ‘hope’ scratching at his throat if he’d paused to think about it.

He stumbled through the door to the shop, and only managed one step forward.

A sound must have left his throat, but he didn’t hear it. Aziraphale did, though – he glanced up from the heavy leather-bound notebook he’d been scribbling in and startled.

“Oh! Oh, Crowley, I didn’t expect you to wake up for at least another few days dear boy, just thought I’d – _oof_!”

Frankly, Crowley cared much less about what Aziraphale just thought he’d do than he did about attempting to squeeze out all the distance between them. With as many of his limbs as he could wrap around the angel. He would get around to being ashamed later.

Aziraphale managed a little chuckle with what little air must have been left in his lungs.

“Well, I never took you for one of those constrictor types, dear.” He patted an absent hand against the feathers now encircling them both. It was a good job Aziraphale always kept his windows so grimy, or all of Soho would have been witness to Crowley’s appalling loss of self-control. Crowley, meanwhile, didn’t respond, as he was far too busy by then burying his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder.

That smell was back, the one he’d always taken for granted, and had never been able to properly recreate4, because there was something angelic to it that a demon couldn’t quite get right. It should have been obvious to him last night, but. Well. He’d been a little preoccupied.

They stood like that for a long time – or at least, Aziraphale stood for a long time, while Crowley clung to him for a slightly shorter time, and eventually came to enough of his senses to put his feet back on the ground. By then, Aziraphale had progressed from aimlessly smoothing at Crowley’s wing to actively returning his embrace, thumb rubbing carefully across the back on his neck. There was something infinitely comforting – and comfortable – about hugs with Aziraphale. Like all of the best bits of Heaven rolled into one, with the added bonus of being able to get a decent cup of tea and biscuits.

Eventually, it was Aziraphale that broke the silence.

“I do think we ought to sit ourselves down and have a proper chat about this,” he said, gently guiding Crowley back towards the door. Crowley went willingly enough, trusting the angel not to let him bump into anything on the way. His wings did brush the doorframe on the way through, but he’d allow that given they shouldn’t have been able to fit through at all.

The little sofa with its someone-awful tartan throw were familiar ground to Crowley. They’d spent many hours there arguing, drinking, talking, or just sitting in silence, Crowley with his phone and Aziraphale with a book. Crowley would sprawl across half of the seat, while Aziraphale tucked his feet beneath Crowley’s legs, two sets of wings draped haphazardly across the back and arms of the sofa. Sometimes, Crowley would do away completely with his human appearance and simply curl himself into Aziraphale’s dressing-grown pocket to sleep away an afternoon.

Today, he pressed himself as close to Aziraphale’s side as he could manage given that they were both still in human-shaped bodies. This was still far closer than anyone else with a human-shaped body would have managed – Crowley was remarkably adept at fitting himself into tight spaces.

“Now,” Aziraphale started. Crowley tensed despite himself. “I’m afraid you’ll have to catch me up to just what happened. Adam, bless his heart, he didn’t give me a lot to work with – just that the world was no longer in danger of ending imminently.”

Crowley lifted his head, almost nose-to-nose with the angel.

“Adam?” He asked. He was close enough to see his own eyes reflected back in Aziraphale’s. He’d probably been staring too long, but too long is something of a relative concept for beings that existed before the conception of time. He kept staring. “Adam brought you back?”

“Well. Yes, eventually.” Aziraphale looked slightly uncomfortable now. He cleared his throat. “After my, ahem, discorporation, I couldn’t seem to find myself a receptive body anywhere near England, and Lord knows I didn’t have time to wait around for the paperwork to go through. I’d quite given up on the notion that I might be able to find something suitable in time for the main event, as it were, when Adam showed up. In a manner of speaking.”

Crowley tried to look encouraging, unsuccessfully.

“And the dear boy – ever so polite, you know, it’s probably a good thing we didn’t track him down any earlier, I shudder to think what might have – ah. Yes, well, he offered to set me back up in my own body, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a relief _that_ was, it’s always Hellish – pardon me – trying to get oneself used to a new shape. The only problem was, I do think he was trying to interfere with the natural order of things as little as possible and just remade me where my, you know, incorporeal self was at the time. So _then_ when I came to, as it were, I had no idea where I was, and no energy left to pop myself back to England.”

His eyes softened, the gentle crows’ feet deepening for a moment. He made an aborted move to gesture with one of his hands, and only then seemed to realise that Crowley was clinging to it. He gave up the attempt, and instead squeezed Crowley’s fingers in a way that felt pleasantly firm to him, but would have likely broken human bones.

“It took me far longer than I should have liked to get back to London,” he said when Crowley didn’t speak. “I tried to call your flat, but I just kept getting voicemail.”

“Hastur wasn’t there was he?” Crowley asked, dropping his head back down to Aziraphale’s shoulder. It was the perfect sort of shoulder for leaning on – round, warm, familiar.

“I – what? No, no of course not? What in the world did you get up to my dear?”

“Doesn’t matter. And I haven’t been back to it, since. Came straight here. I thought that if Adam brought you back, this is where you’d be.”

“And I wasn’t,” Aziraphale said, lamely. Crowley scowled viciously against the weave of Aziraphale’s jumper.

“I thought you were gone-for-good,” he said, curling impossibly further into the angel’s solid presence. Most demons, unless they were gearing up for a fight, didn’t dare get within touching distance of an angel. Most demons associated that radiance with the moments before the Fall, or with the sorts of angels that discorporated field agents with extreme prejudice. Most demons, when they thought of angels, did not think of comfort, of safety, of an Arrangement.

Crowley had always savoured any fleeting contact with the angel; but only to a point, and had never let himself indulge past that. Indulgence, he felt, was much more Aziraphale’s thing.

Bless it. He’d indulge as much as he bloody well pleased now.

“Thought Heaven or Hell had come after you and wiped you from existence so well that not even Adam could do anything.” Crowley’s voice cracked. “He’d already stopped the Apocalypse by just deciding he didn’t want it to happen, and he and his little human friends had – had –” He waved an expressive hand that wasn’t caught up with Aziraphale’s. “ _Whooshed_ three of the horsepersons. He put reality back, and made it so humans don’t have a clue any of it happened, and after all that you were still _gone_!”

“And my wine?” Aziraphale asked with a cautious humour.

“’s what humans do when they’re upset,” Crowley said. He stared at their hands – his own long and spindly, Aziraphale’s plump and smooth. “Get drunk. Threaten to break things. Pray.” The last he’d muttered under his breath, but of course Aziraphale heard it.

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” he said. Crowley barrelled on.

“And then, you were here! Except I thought you were just a product of the wine.” Aziraphale made a little noise like he was stifling a laugh, which Crowley magnanimously ignored. “So I thought, what the He- somewhere, I have things I need to say to you.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said softly. “You said I’m your best friend.” He sounded – awed. As though he couldn’t bloody sense lov – _friendship_. Crowley peered up at him.

“Who else would I have been talking about, you blessed idiot?” He asked.

Aziraphale huffed.

“I’m quite certain I don’t know,” he said, refusing to meet Crowley’s eyes. “I don’t know everything that goes on in your life, now, do I?”

“More or less,” Crowley admitted thoughtlessly, and winced. It seemed to be the right thing to say, however – Aziraphale’s face smoothed out of the creases that had started forming, and he relaxed back against Crowley.

“Well it’s certainly a relief to hear it,” he said. “You know, I couldn’t have asked for a better Adversary.” Crowley laughed, startled and sharp.

“Me neither,” he agreed. There was a pause, strung through with something that wasn’t quite tension, but was perhaps a close cousin of it. Crowley opened his mouth to break the silence, only for Aziraphale to beat him to it.

“There is something – that is, I need to – well, I mean, I have something I must…” he trailed off.

“I couldn’t imagine the world without you,” Crowley said, and then gaped for a moment at himself. He hadn’t meant to say that at all.

But, in for a penny, as the humans liked to say.

“Back when we first decided we wanted to keep the world as it was, and when I was driving to Tadfield with that damned book and all of your absurd little notes, I still thought, if the world didn’t end, that you’d be part of it. For me, anyway.” He took a deep, steadying breath. It’d been hard enough to try and get his point across when absolutely legless. Somehow it was even worse sober. “And then the world didn’t end, and you were gone, and I thought, well, we did it and I couldn’t even enjoy the bloody thing anymore.”

Aziraphale looked – well, he looked stunned.

“My dear boy, you _love_ the world!” He said.

“Yes,” Crowley agreed, and waited.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. Then: “ _Oh_!”

“Yes.” Crowley shifted a little, uncomfortable, and pulled his hand back. Or rather, he tried to – Aziraphale’s grip now was vicelike. Crowley risked a glance up towards the angel, and was slightly horrified by the tears he saw clinging to the edges of his lashes. He straightened like a rod had been jammed up his spine.

“Angel? Angel, no, it’s fine, really, it’s –”

“Dearest, would you _please_ be quiet!”

Crowley’s mouth snapped shut. Which was something of a shame, because that was when Aziraphale leaned in to press a kiss to his mouth.

This part, at least, Crowley had always found more than worth the effort.

It was different with an angel, he realised. Humans may have been experts when it came to physical sensations, but there was really no comparison when an angel can kiss you across multiple planes of reality. When an angel can suffuse every ounce of their being with love, and then roll it over you like a wave. A human would have wept to be in the presence of such a miracle. Any other demon would have been halfway to discorporated. Crowley? Crowley took all of that love, twisted it up, wrapped it around a couple of times, and sent it crashing back.

They sat for a while, foreheads together, doing nothing but sending it back and forth.

“How could you think,” Aziraphale said eventually, his human form slipping just slightly as he forgot himself, “even for a moment, that you would be unwelcome?”

Crowley, who until that moment had managed to keep remarkable control over himself, flushed.

“Well, you’re an angel. ‘s different. Loving things is hmm, you know. Your job.”

“Yes, and look at how good I’ve been at it,” Aziraphale said dryly. Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Well, _you_ could have said something,” Crowley pointed out. Aziraphale shot him a scandalised look, and didn’t dignify him with a reply. They sat comfortably for a while longer. Just long enough, in fact, for Crowley’s headache to start to make its presence known. Something of it must have shown in his face, because Aziraphale smoothed a careful hand across his brow and asked:

“What do you say to a walk and then lunch?”

Crowley pretended to think it over.

“Only if you let me turn some umbrellas inside out,” he said finally, and, feeling suddenly bold, pressed a kiss to the corners of the angel’s eyes. Aziraphale laughed.

“I suppose I could be persuaded, love,” he agreed, standing and offering a polite hand.

They left the shop arm-in-arm with an umbrella that hadn’t existed mere seconds previous and was rather shocked to suddenly be there. And as they turned down the road, heading towards St. James Park, two beings – on technically opposite sides, but with goals that seemed to align a great deal, and really what purpose do sides even have in the truly great scheme of things – smiled at their metaphorical cards, shuffled, and watched them go.

 

* * *

 

1 – And, for that matter, a good job poorly done

2 – Had Crowley actually been asked to make such a list, he might have noticed a common factor in almost all of his answers. It’s unlikely, but not impossible

3 – He had never told Aziraphale where the money had come from, and the angel knew better than to ask

4 – Not that he would ever, not in another six thousand years, admit that he’d tried


End file.
